Arnold Schwarzenegger Detained in Customs for 3 Hours Over Audemars Piguet Watch

The world-famous actor and former Governor of California landed in Munich, Austria, on Wednesday (January 18), hoping to catch a connecting flight to Kitzbühel, where he'd attend the World Climate Summit the next day. Also at the event, Schwarzenegger planned to auction off one of his own watches for charity.

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and, in this case, undeclared luxury watches. German media is saying that the actor ended up being detained by customs for what must've been three long and very annoying hours, once officers noticed the watch in his luggage and then the fact that he'd failed to declare it in writing.

In what has been described as a rather bad comedy script, customs officers told Schwarzenegger that he must pay tax for the watch since he had plans to sell it and it would remain within EU space. Arnold's argument that the sale was for charity fell on deaf ears, so he offered to pay for it with his credit card.

The offer was declined, so the actor was escorted to a nearby bank to withdraw cash from the ATM machine. The party found the bank closed, so they returned to the airport to wait for another agent to bring another machine.

After three hours, Schwarzenegger paid off the taxes and the fine, amounting to a cool €9,000 ($9,800), on a watch he'd estimated at €20,000 ($21,800) but customs officers said was actually more expensive, at €26,000 ($28,300).

According to the same reports, the watch was an Audemars Piguet timepiece that Schwarzenegger said the luxury watchmaker had designed specifically for him. It was part of his personal collection, and he was planning to auction it off to raise money for a good cause.

If that's accurate, he could have been carrying a 1999 Royal Oak Offshore Arnold Schwarzenegger The Legacy Audemars Piguet watch, which was produced in only 1,500 examples. AP usually launches very limited-number editions, and this one was no exception. Given the fact that it's no longer in production and the Arnold Schwarzenegger association, a Legacy Audemars Piguet piece usually goes for more than $35,000 on the specialized market.

The 3-hour snafu at the Munich Airport, which apparently included a one-hour interrogation with very invasive personal questions, didn't sit well with Schwarzenegger. "This is the problem that Germany is suffering from. You can no longer see the forest for the trees," he told the media of authorities' refusal to acknowledge the fact that the auction was a charitable one to forget about bureaucracy for once.